"Abominable!" responded Balbus. "Abominable and absurd!"
"Wasn't Burns a plough-boy?" said Ariston, "And Shakespeare a play-actor?"
"A second-rate play-actor, too," echoed Lydia First, "and ended by lending money at usurious interest!"
"He chose to be that," retorted Balbus. "What we are fighting for is the right to choose our calling."
"But haven't you chosen yours?" asked I. "Isn't journalism of your choosing?"
"But I have to work at the state factory at the bidding of the state," answered Balbus, "for half of every day."
I could not help comparing his lot with my own in Boston. I had never enjoyed the practice of law; indeed, I had adopted the profession because my father had a practice to hand down to me. And as I sat day after day listening to the often fancied grievances of my clients, their petty ambitions, narrow animosities, and, particularly in divorce cases, to the nasty disputes of their domestic life, I often felt as though my profession converted me into a sort of moral sewer into which every client poured his contribution. Had I really been free when I chose to devote my whole life to so pitiful a business!
"Some part of the day," I answered, thinking aloud, "must, I suppose, be devoted to the securing of food and clothing. In the savage state—in which some people contend liberty is most complete—the whole day is practically devoted to it. In our state it was much the same, except that a few were exempt because they made the many work for them. But only a very few enjoyed the privilege of idleness—or shall we call it 'liberty'?"
"No," answered Neaera, "it is quite unnecessary to confuse things; liberty is one thing and idleness is another. We want the liberty to choose our work—not the license to refuse it."